Unit Plan Rantings

Hey all, I'm stressing out about this. Below are some ideas, let me know what you think. Also, when we work out what the unit will be about/lessons, we need to workout how we will present it.

I haven't broken things down into individual lessons, I've just stuck ideas under the relevant sections from Murdoch and Hornsby's planner (up on LMS in Integrated studies).

I don't mind the idea of before was bush etc. I just think it should be part of a greater sustainability unit. If we just focus on before/after, what will our 'Action' be? Usually the 'Action' activity allows the students to participate in some sort of community action and allows the unit to end on a positive note. It also helps them act on what they have learnt and links it to every day life. I was thinking that this could be students informing their peers about what they can do to be more environmentally friendly at home/have less of an impact on the environment. Maybe even assess how sustainable the school and taking steps to make it better.

Sayra's lessons could still be used, but they would be used in conjunction with other activities. Here's an example:

I'm going to assume that the before/after dioramas fit into the 'Making Conclusions' section of the Murdoch and Hornsby planner. Also, I'm going to assume the peer information sessions slot into the 'Action' section of the proforma.

'Tuning In', one activity could be using place-mats.

Kath Murdoch uses place-mats: put a photo of an environment in the middle of an A3 piece of paper. Split the page into quadrants with questions in each quadrant (What do you see in this picture? How did it get this way? Where in the world was this photo taken? What lives here?)

Photos could be of:

lush rainforest
logged forest
nice beach
oil spill near a beach
pretty country town
congested city

Students fill in each quadrant. Other Tuning In could be playing some games such as: Catchment Detox, Recycle Zone, US EPA and stuff from arkiveeducation.org (to name a few); these can be used throughout the unit as we see fit, but work well as Tuning In.

Students can be taken to a museum (as per Sayra's suggestion) to look at all the animals we used to have. This can be part of Tuning In; why aren't these animals around any more? What happened to these animals? Also, students could look at endangered animals (hello Zoo visit). Students can pick an animal and spend some time finding out what happened to it or why it is endangered. Sites like Red List, the ABC site (and maybe Seed Hunter if we look at native plants that are endangered) could be relevant here.

'Finding Out'
Activities can be related to the texts we have discussed (Uno's Garden, Animals of Farthing Wood, Jeanie Baker books etc.). These could be used to scaffold lessons about how environments have changed. Here we talk about natural habitats (Sayra's before was bush) and then what humans introduced to the environment and what they removed. Tasks like comparing pages from different sections of Uno's Garden or looking at the changes that occur throughout the pages of the Jeanie Baker books.

I think this leads nicely to the Story of a River activity which has clear links to Science, Humanities (Geography), English and maybe Maths - resource sheets and instructions are on the website. With this activity, students can get an understanding of how humans and what they build can impact a river. The teacher can say: 'A power station has been built near the river', the students add the appropriate ingredient (in this case vinegar) and see what happens to the water.

We can use Robyn's mind maps as part of 'Sorting Out'; students can look at the texts from 'Tuning In' and list key words, concepts etc. Some students may choose to take photos of their 'river' or even the animals from the museum/zoo and they can visually sort out their information. KWL charts and Venn diagrams could also be used.

During 'Going Further' students can research a sustainability topic...need to find a way for them to display the information that they find.

Looking at the proforma, we would need to flesh out the Understandings, Related Values/Attitudes/Issues, Key Concepts sections. I think that's about it. Have I made any sense?

Since we don't have to have individual lesson plans, we just have to demonstrate that the unit consists of about 10 'activities/lessons', 3 of which are Maths related and 3 that are Lit. Maybe a vague presentation outline could be each person does one of the following:

1. Introduce the unit, reasons for choosing it (here we can discuss info from Understandings and Key concepts)
2. What aspects of VELS (progression points, Domains etc.) are covered.
3. Discuss our Maths focus lessons/activities and their integrated links
4. Discuss out Lit focus lessons/activities and their integrated links
5. Discuss some of the other Integrated activities

i ran into sayra on monday after i typed in this in the morning and realised with it being a lit and numeracy assignment, clearly can't chop the maths...haaha it would be awesome if i paid attention to what the subject was...a

yeh i think this could definitely work but i think there would definitely need to be strong focus on the sustainability aspects of it. maybe instead of maths because those design aspects of the city could fall under the art realm, we do two civics and community or whatever it is and focus on the damage to the environment, and that could definitely lead onto an english piece of writing where the students choose the perspective of an animal and how the environment has damaged their habitat. i suppose then the sustainability learning could look at the impact on animals which links into this piece of writing? not sure, just chucking it out there...

the city the students create could be our whole unit

(sayra)

This just occured to me. What do you think of making the city/bush the whole unit?

So the art would be 2 lessons, the city diarama and the old bush diarama

they could have a maths lesson drawing out where everything is going to go and deciding on what building is what.

Science could be the type of bush that their city used to be - the open scrub/dense forest/ plains/desertand thus the type of animals they would have had back then.

There could be an English lesson on writing a article/story about their city, hmm, ok, I dunno.

But what do you think about using the Before Was Bush Now Is City idea for the whole unit?

VELS for Create a City

I'm thinking something along the lines of:

The Arts

VELS progression point 3.25 Creating and Making

* Exploration of ideas generated from presented sources; for example, ideas for a music work prompted by viewing a photograph

VELS progression point 3.5 Exploring and Responding

* Consideration of possibilities, content and influences when planning, developing and refining their own arts works for presentation to specific audiences

Humanities (Geography)

VELS progression point 3.25 Geographic Knowledge and Understanding

* Identification and understanding of the various types of land use and their distribution in Australia; for example; farming, forest, towns, parks

VELS progression point 3.5 Geographic Knowledge and Understanding

* Identification of the impacts of various land uses on the environment; for example, the effect of land clearance on soil quality

VELS progression point 3.75 Geographic Knowledge and Understanding

* Identification of human and physical characteristics of local and global environments

Communication

VELS progression point 3.25 Listening, Viewing and Responding

* Attentiveness to and understanding of ideas and information in peers’ oral presentations; for example, project reports in Science or the Humanities

VELS progression point 3.25 Presenting

* Inclusion of a small number of related ideas in written, visual and oral presentations

VELS progression point 3.75 Presenting

* Organised structure, including a beginning, middle and end in short, prepared individual or group oral, written and visual presentations

Design, Creativity and Technology

VELS progression point 3.25 Investigating and Designing

* Generation of design ideas – labelled sketches and drawings, explanations or models – in response to a design brief

If we get them to present it, we could work English (speaking and listening) in too. Maybe this could be the final task where we assess what they have learnt.

just found this, had some issues with Flash installation.. will try again later. If someone else would like to browse an see if they can access, otherwise... I'll get to it next week. :)

Interactive Sustainability

Hiya all,

Awesome ideas guys. Lovin the before/after human existence diorama concept. The art attack instructional display looks great, it will surely be a winner.

Whilst completing my art lessons based on a text, I discovered these cool mind maps which I thought could be incorporated in the process as a lesson wh

en looking at the past and present. Also what can be done to improve the stability of the earths environment for future generations.

Sorry I'm not contributing much at this stage, I have to complete th

e arts lessons before friday and have a few other things in need of my attention.

I will be on board (all hands on deck) next week.

Cheerio :)

some other ideas

Hi All, I'm doing these as posts cause you can only have 10 pages and I figured we could chat about the lessons and then make pages once we've settled on what we're doing...

(sayra) There's a science lesson in there too, what would have lived here back then and what kinds of wildlife lives here now. I don't think we should go back to the dinosaurs or anything, just pre-1788 really. What do you think? There's probably an interesting way we can come up with to find out the back then bit. They can be Environmental Detectives. Or a geography lesson looking at the way the landscape changes as they level out hills to build. That might be getting too complicated and too far afield thou...

We could take them to the museum to look at all the taxidermied animals maybe? It could lead into extinct and endangered animals, especially Australian animals. SO that could lead to the zoo instead. Go see a bunch of live animals rather than a bunch of dead ones. They could make venn diagrams of the animals who are winning out (like feral cats, brumbies, fox and possums) and the guys who are loosing the battle (ahahaha, I was about the write 'bunyips', but I mean bilbies, quoll, erm, a bunch of others). They could look into why do some thrive and some don't. I think there's probably a good poetry lesson in there too. Poetry is all about opposites, or can be, and this is examining two opposite environments.

The city idea

From Bron:

heya all,
love this idea, it is uno's garden all over and is reminding me of
the myer christmas windows. awesome. check out this model of how to make a rad city. it uses recycled materials which in itself ties beautifully into sustainability. loves it!

http://www.hitentertainment.com/artattack/menu_artattacks.html

scroll down slightly and click on 'Create a city'. for some reason there was no direct link into this activity.

(sam) As for the diorama, I'd prefer to have students choose their own environment and represent it before and after.  It gives them the freedom to choose something that they feel will engage them.  That said, I'm always going to go for the option where kids choose their own topic.